From the Record Cellar
Music for active listening.
Before I was anything, I was a musician.
I started playing piano at nine. Growing up, my dad was always the “music dad” (not the “sports dad”) which is why I still can’t tell you one damn thing about football, but I can talk to you for hours about Motown or Mozart.
I’ve noticed, in our distracted world, people don’t slow down enough to really listen to music anymore. An album used to be something that friends would sit down and listen to together, just like how you would enjoy a film. And feel. And discuss.
When was the last time you actively listened to a song? A whole album?
CD’s came along and made it possible to easily skip from song to song. Music business became about the one hit that could stand out from the rest of an album. Now, thanks to social media, people only need about 10 good seconds of a song to put in the background of their main character selfie reel. It makes me wonder if songs will begin to be manufactured for being a good short clip of background music. Then we also have the issue with trending audio. When I occasionally spend time on Instagram, I love picking out the perfect unique song to add to a video. Something niche, something I love, something that I could maybe even introduce to a new listener. Over time, I found out that videos with trending music got more views and this made me outraged. Not because I wanted more views, but because of what it did to creativity and the way media gets shared. People would post songs that were trending that they didn’t even know intimately. It’s musical mimicry and here is the biggest problem of all: it homogenizes music just like social media homogenizes everything. All that’s left is what is neutral and bland to the palette. Unoffensive, which is sometimes antithetical to good art. When there is an incentive to share what’s popular, it drowns out everything that is avant-garde.
So in a tiny rebellion against trending music, here are some non-trending songs that are worth really listening to. If there is one thing to know about me, I love living seasonally. Not just with food and fashion, but even music and movies. I have seasonal playlists, so all of these are picked ripe for summer. Summer music is usually energetic, extroverted, often latin, syncopated rhythm and a touch of horns. Other times, it’s ultra-cool 90’s Hip Hop that makes you feel like you’re a kid hanging out with your friends on summer break again. I imagine summer music to be played outside, probably in your neighbor’s garden and with a mojito in your hand.
Albums:
Stone Flower by Antônio Carlos Jobim, 1970
I love Jobim. I fell in love with bossa nova in my early twenties and never stopped listening. It’s sexy, it’s intellectual, it’s the perfect background music for anything. I particularly love this album for the inclusion of the song “Brazil.” I recently watched Terry Gilliam’s dystopian film Brazil from 1985, which was ironically named after this song and features a slightly distorted version of it within the score. This album sounds like vacation. Juicy mangoes eaten in the kitchen when you come back in from spending a few hours with your lover on the beach.
Brazilian Girls by Brazilian Girls, 2005
I have listened to this album countless times over the years and I never get tired of it. This band is truly unique. The lead singer, Sabina Sciubba, is a singer, composer, actress, and performance artist who is fluent in six languages and effortlessly shifts from one to the next on this album. Their music sounds like traveling with a small group of artistic friends through many different countries in Europe by train. She has really developed her own sound as a composer and I can never get enough of it. This album features Pablo Neruda poetry as lyrics in Me gustas cuando callas” and "Die Gedanken sind frei" ("Thoughts Are Free") is a German protest song about the freedom of thought that became popular with the revolutions of 1848. And a really fun upbeat song referencing what is both vulvar & vulgar (to some) so be mindful of sensitive ears because it’s undeniably catchy.
Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) by Digable Planets, 1993
If you’ve been to a hip spot in your neighborhood, you’ve maybe heard “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” at some point. However, this album is completely worth your undivided attention on any relaxed Sunday morning while burning your favorite incense. If you think you don’t like Hip Hop, I challenge you to listen to this. It’s poetry poured over jazz. A very niche scene in New York in the early 90’s birthed a laid-back culture of Hip Hop inspired by creativity, positivity, and often including tasteful samples (like Coltrane’s A Love Supreme) and philosophy references like Sartre and Camus.
Allah-Las by Allah-Las, 2012
Nothing feels more appropriate in the heat of the summer than care-free, coastal, psychedelic surf rock. It’s dreamy and melancholic and hopeful, like a summer day in a good film. Perfectly reminiscent of a 1960’s California. This album sounds like spending a sun-drenched day with your friends, but also having a quiet moment to dread the return to something: work, responsibility, reality.
Here is a whole summer playlist curated by yours truly:
If you like reading about music, let me know.
Thanks for listening!
XO,
MB